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"College teaching Humor."
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Anxiety and coping strategies among nursing students during the covid-19 pandemic
Anxiety is highly prevalent among nursing students even in normal circumstances. In Israel during the covid-19 pandemic and mandatory lockdown, nursing students encountered a new reality of economic uncertainty, fear of infection, challenges of distance education, lack of personal protection equipment (PPE) at work etc. The objective of this study was to assess levels of anxiety and ways of coping among nursing students in the Ashkelon Academic College, Southern District, Israel.
A cross-sectional study was conducted among all 244 students in the nursing department during the third week of a national lockdown. Anxiety level was assessed using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-Item Scale with a cut-off point of 10 for moderate and of 15 for severe anxiety. Factor analysis was used to identify coping components. The prevalence of moderate and severe anxiety was 42.8% and 13.1% respectively. Gender, lack of PPE, and fear of infection were significantly associated with a higher anxiety score. Stronger resilience and usage of humor were associated with significantly lower anxiety levels, while mental disengagement with higher anxiety levels.
The nursing department's staff may contribute in lowering student anxiety by maintaining a stable educational framework, providing high quality distant teaching and encouraging and supporting students through this challenging period.
•Anxiety is highly prevalent among nursing students even in normal circumstances.•The prevalence of moderate and severe anxiety during the covid-19 pandemic was 43% and 13% respectively.•Female gender and lack of PPE at work were significantly associated with higher anxiety scores.•Stronger resilience and usage of humor were associated with significantly lower anxiety levels.•Mental disengagement (alcohol, sedative drugs usage and excessive eating) was associated with higher anxiety levels.
Journal Article
To be funny or not to be funny: Gender differences in student perceptions of instructor humor in college science courses
For over 50 years instructor humor has been recognized as a way to positively impact student cognitive and affective learning. However, no study has explored humor exclusively in the context of college science courses, which have the reputation of being difficult and boring. The majority of studies that explore humor have assumed that students perceive instructor humor to be funny, yet students likely perceive some instructor humor as unfunny or offensive. Further, evidence suggests that women perceive certain subjects to be more offensive than men, yet we do not know what impact this may have on the experience of women in the classroom. To address these gaps in the literature, we surveyed students across 25 different college science courses about their perceptions of instructor humor in college science classes, which yielded 1637 student responses. Open-coding methods were used to analyze student responses to a question about why students appreciate humor. Multinomial regression was used to identify whether there are gender differences in the extent to which funny, unfunny, and offensive humor influenced student attention to course content, instructor relatability, and student sense of belonging. Logistic regression was used to examine gender differences in what subjects students find funny and offensive when joked about by college science instructors. Nearly 99% of students reported that they appreciate instructor humor and reported that it positively changes the classroom atmosphere, improves student experiences during class, and enhances the student-instructor relationship. We found that funny humor tends to increase student attention to course content, instructor relatability, and student sense of belonging. Conversely, offensive humor tends to decrease instructor relatability and student sense of belonging. Lastly, we identified subjects that males were more likely to find funny and females were more likely to find offensive if a college science instructor were to joke about them.
Journal Article
The educational power of humor on student engagement in online learning environments
The primary goal of the study is to investigate the effect of the usage of humor on behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement in online learning. Humorous elements were integrated into the online learning components. The mixed-method study was conducted over 14 weeks with the participation of 74 university students in an online university course. As a result, elements of humor can be integrated into materials for attention grabbing, recalling, feedback, and humor breaks. A diversity of humorous elements created a significant difference and improved behavioral engagement for course materials, discussions, and assignments. However, humorous elements did not contribute to the behavioral engagement for quizzes. It was additionally observed for emotional engagement that the use of humor created a significant difference and improved emotional engagement. As for cognitive engagement, a positive influence of the usage of humorous elements in course materials, discussions and assignments was observed.
Journal Article
Effect of university teachers’ teaching style on EFL learners’ classroom engagement: the mediating role of self-efficacy
Background
The objective of this study is to construct a model that can predict classroom engagement by Chinese EFL learners. Grounded in self-determination theory, this study specifically investigates how university teachers’ specific teaching styles (humorous, caring, logical, creative) influence EFL learners’ classroom engagement through the mediating role of self-efficacy.
Methods
Through convenience sampling, this study was administered on 1,064 EFL learners across seven Chinese universities and colleges representing different tiers using validated questionnaires. And structural equation modeling was employed to test the mediating role. The hypothesized model was subsequently evaluated using structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess the path coefficients and overall predictive capability of the model.
Results
This research found that the cognitive-oriented teaching styles (the logical teaching style and creative teaching style), but not affective-oriented styles (the humorous teaching style and caring teaching style), could significantly predict EFL learners’ classroom engagement. Besides, students’ self-efficacy could directly predict classroom engagement and mediated the link between teaching style (the logical teaching style and creative teaching style) and classroom engagement.
Conclusions
This study contributes to the understanding of the differential mechanisms through which cognitive-oriented teaching styles and affective-oriented styles influence EFL learners’ classroom engagement, revealing self-efficacy as the critical mediator. These findings provide concrete references for teacher training programs to prioritize logic-based instructional scaffolding and creative thinking stimulation techniques when designing pedagogical interventions aimed at enhancing learners’ self-efficacy beliefs and engagement outcomes.
Journal Article
All the world’s a stage: transforming entrepreneurship education through design thinking
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present an alternate approach to entrepreneurship pedagogy development through an iterative journey of co-ownership between students, industry partners and academic course teams to enhance student satisfaction and learning outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilising design thinking, the pedagogy evolved over a three-year period (2013-2015) through iterative innovation in the delivery model and assessments, underpinned by notions of classroom community, constructivism, justice and equity, humour and role-play.
Findings
The findings strongly validate the integration of notions of justice and equity, constructivism, humour and role-play as learning principles and delivery elements in entrepreneurship pedagogy to enhance student satisfaction and learning outcomes. A critical outcome of this design and delivery process is the reduction of barriers between students and teachers and the impact this has on creating a shared learning journey; a journey that in this case has resulted in meaningful outcomes for all involved.
Research limitations/implications
Further research with longitudinal data is needed to validate the link between design-led entrepreneurship pedagogy and enhanced student learning outcomes as well as implications relating to graduate employability. In global settings, further data collection could also validate whether the findings are culturally neutral or culturally sensitive.
Practical implications
Entrepreneurship educators will benefit from this pedagogical approach in seeking to meet the needs of business start-ups, intrapreneurial capacity-building and potentially, enhancement of graduate employability. The model also offers promise for other learning contexts.
Originality/value
Design thinking has received scant attention in entrepreneurship pedagogy. This case study demonstrates how design thinking can enhance student satisfaction and learning outcomes by integrating notions of constructivism, justice and equity, humour and role-play in entrepreneurship curricula.
Journal Article
Wit and wisdom: using computational humor to communicate about economics
This paper explores the potential of large language models to enhance economics education through computational humor. We employ OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to infuse humor into summaries of three Nobel laureates’ contributions to economics and conduct a small empirical exercise with undergraduate students to test the pedagogical efficacy of computational humor. The results suggest that computer-generated humor may be an effective learning aid: the results of the students who rate the humorous versions of the instructional texts as genuinely funny are significantly better than the results of their peers who are not amused. Encouragingly for teachers who try to be funny but fail, we do not find evidence that ineffectual humor is detrimental to learning.
Journal Article
Humor in library instruction: a narrative review with implications for the health sciences
Objective: The review sought to gain a better understanding of humor’s use and impact as a teaching and learning strategy in academic library and health sciences instruction and to determine if the most common techniques across both disciplines can be adapted to increase engagement in medical libraries’ information literacy efforts.Methods: This narrative review involved retrieving citations from several subject databases, including Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts; Information Science & Technology Abstracts; Library & Information Science Source; PubMed; and CINAHL. The author limited her review to those publications that explicitly addressed the use of humor in relation to some form of academic library or health sciences instruction. Studies examining use of humor in patient education were excluded.Results: Scholars and practitioners have consistently written about humor as an instructional strategy from the 1980s onward, in both the library literature and health sciences literature. These authors have focused on instructors’ attitudes, benefits to students, anecdotes, and best practices summaries. Overall, both librarians and health sciences educators have a positive opinion of humor, and many instructors make use of it in their classrooms, though caution and careful planning is advised.Conclusions: Commonalities between the library and information science literature and health sciences literature provide a cohesive set of best practices and strategies for successfully incorporating comedy into library instruction sessions. Health sciences librarians can adapt several of the most commonly used types of instructional humor (e.g., silly examples, cartoons, storytelling, etc.) to their own contexts with minimal risk.
Journal Article
Humour beyond human: eco-humour as a pedagogical toolkit for environmental education
This article strives to open a window on ‘eco-humour’, an umbrella term for diverse forms of humour targeting ecological and environmental issues. It encourages readers to consider eco-humour as a valuable, pedagogical toolkit for environmental education and communication. To this aim, eco-humour is, first, put into perspective of humour scholarship. In particular, I discuss the critical and corrective potential of humour to address and possibly redress environmental issues. Pedagogical benefits of humour are, then, touched upon to pave the way for a discussion of ‘humour-integrated environmental education’. The paper also addresses UNESCO’s 2030 roadmap of education for sustainable development and the ‘sustainability’ component of Australian Curriculum to further justify and contextualise the use of eco-humour. Moreover, several university-based initiatives to integrate echo-humour into environmental education are considered. Likewise, I briefly address ‘humour-integrated language learning’ as an emerging approach in language education that may offer valuable insights into eco-humour curriculum integration. Finally, the article points out several practical considerations and future directions in humour-integrated environmental education.
Journal Article
Effect of perceived teacher's sense of humor on academic achievement of university students about their demographic variable
This study examines the effect of a teacher's sense of humor on the academic achievement of university students. A total of 180 university students, 90 from arts and 90 from science, were asked to rate their teacher's sense of humor in the classroom. An investigator measures the effect of teachers' sense of humor on their academic achievement. Where the investigator used stratified random sampling for sample selection, an ex post facto research method was used as the study's design. The findings showed a significant difference between the perceived teacher's sense of humor and university students' academic achievement concerning their stream. The study also revealed that teachers who use humor in the classroom are more approachable and likable, which may increase engagement and motivation to learn. The implications of these findings suggest that incorporating humor in the classroom can be an effective strategy for improving students' performance.
Journal Article